But where have you been this long
time?"
"Oh, fleecing the King's subjects to the best of my poor ability in
the law! and without half the success of you and Max here, who toll
the gate of the Basse Ville more easily than the Intendant gets in
the King's taxes!"
"Why not?" replied Bartemy, with a pious twist of his neck, and an
upward cast of his blank orbs. "It is pour l'amour de Dieu! We
beggars save more souls than the Cure; for we are always exhorting
men to charity. I think we ought to be part of Holy Church as well
as the Gray Friars."
"And so we are part of Holy Church, Bartemy!" interrupted Max
Grimeau. "When the good Bishop washed twelve pair of our dirty feet
on Maunday Thursday in the Cathedral, I felt like an Apostle--I did!
My feet were just ready for benediction; for see! they had never
been washed, that I remember of, since I marched to the relief of
Prague! But you should have been out to Belmont to-day, Master
Pothier! There was the grandest Easter pie ever made in New France!
You might have carried on a lawsuit inside of it, and lived off the
estate for a year--I ate a bushel of it.
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